The Immaculate Misconception

[RM]

Just tossing this out......What was the first fact about Lightfoot you learned that proved an assumption incorrect.

In my case, it was that 'Lightfoot' was not a stage name.

[Borderstone]

Hey Rm. Good question.

Well what i asumed about Gordon Lightfoot was what I assumed about a lot of acts with less than 10 Top 40 hits to their credit......that if they couldn't get any more hits than that,the rest of their music must suck.

A young and pretty narrow minded way to look at music,especially given my now more open minded likes. I saw Gordon's 6 hits and thought that about him back then (1980's when I got my first Top 40 Hits Book from Billboard magazine.


What I learned? Just like books...you can't judge an album or it's artist by the cover.
(Unless it's a Britney Spears or Milli Vanilli recording. LOL! )

[timetraveler]

What did I discover that I had been wrong about? The same things that RM & Borderstone had once had misconceptions about. Now days, the first thing I do when I go out shopping is to hit the electronics section at Wal-Marts to see what they might have, and if I'm anywhere near a Barnes & Nobles, like I was today, I check out their audio/visual section to see what they've got. I went in there today & found three more of his albums on disc: Dream Street Rose, Shadows, and Old Dan's Records. I found a copy of Complete Greatest Hits at Wal-Marts just last week & right now I'm as happy as if I were a kid at Christmas!

[BILLW]

I thought he was taller until I got close enough to see for myself. Even sitting in the audience it's hard to tell. But the ladies have never seemed to notice, LOL. "I'll have a thousand 'fore I'm through"

Bill

[johnfowles]

That's a tough question.I really cannot recall the verey first, but of more recent times I'll go along with realising that he is nowhere
near as tall as he appears on stage. Beyond that I offer this:-
I found out a couple of years ago that Gord has a selective and possibly imperfect memory when it comes to remembering the inspiration of some of his songs.I had fondly imagined that he would recall exactly why a song got written. especially if he were given a strong hint of the answer. But one such enquiry a couple of years ago produced what I thought disappointedly was a fudged reply
I had heard the recording of the 1969 Charttlotetown Festival CBC broadcast, in which Gord very clearly introduced a song as
"This one is about the heroine of Pig's Eye Minnesota", but beyond finding out by googling that that was the name by which the future capital of that state was known, in honour of Pig's Eye Landing established by a (blind in one eye) French Canadan Fur trapper and whiskey trader who went by the name of Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant.
Gord then sang the relatively new song Bitter Green.
in the songbook book Gord only said
"Written in a noisy diesel taxicab on the way in [to London] from Heathrow. My wife adopted that as her song after our divorce. I went over to London to write the album, to jog my mind into a writing space."
The next time I met Gord after hearing about the heroine, I quoted back to him his 1969 intro but he would only repeat the fact
that his wife adopted it as her own song.
I may try again if the occasion seems promising!!
a google for "pig's eye heroine" produces an impressive number of results
searching within those for "gordon Lightfoot" as expected brought up these two corfid threads
http://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=15378
in which I said more or less the same as above and
http://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php?p=99550
which elicited a useful reference to a possible heroine
unearthed by CHarlene
"posted on the J.P.Cormier message board:
RE: Bitter Green (my first Lightfoot 45...) The heroine of the story is supposed to be the mother of Gabriel Dumont, Louis Riel's military leader. As I recall from his live intro to the tune when he was recording the Sunday Concert album, she had a tragic life, and Dumont came to be known as "The Bastard Son of the Whore of Pig's Eye".
"

[Kathy Number Four]

Originally Posted by BILLW

I thought he was taller until I got close enough to see for myself. Even sitting in the audience it's hard to tell. But the ladies have never seemed to notice, LOL. "I'll have a thousand 'fore I'm through"

Bill

Oh, to be one of them!! (sigh)

My misconception was that Gordon was of North American Indian descent, because Lightfoot sounds so to me. But I my friend Norinne asked him what his heritage is, and he said that his roots are Scottish.

[Borderstone]

Another thing is,I thought if i met him,his voice would be as deep as those lower rounder notes he sings. (Like on Wild Strawberries when he says,"Is it really true,you can never really win"? )